u/Basnjas

77 post karma · 7,862 comment karma · joined Oct 2015

Basnjas

I absolutely LOVE your design! I just spent the last few minutes studying it and it has so many interesting touches. It’s a great design, regardless of whether DC acknowledges it. :)

Basnjas

Same. I was sitting on enough land expansion items to do 3 expansions and like 40 each for storage expansion. I had no room for anything else. Finally upgraded both and expected one of those to appear as soon as I did. Surprisingly, they’ve both remained absent.

Basnjas

Thanks for the reply! It’s as I thought but good to have it confirmed. :)

Basnjas

Question about any of the premium road types:

If you buy a section of road, say the Sakura road, and you want to move it to a different area or change its location, does it just get demolished, a small refund, and you rebuild elsewhere?

What about these Spooky roads? I’m guessing this is a limited time availability. Or do you think these will be added to the available road types permanently now? After the season, will these still be available?

If not, will adding to your city now give you road pieces you can put in storage and use later?

Basnjas

Thanks for the response.

Wasn’t aware so much has changed just in the last year. I read about the changes to trains this year and those frustrations. And the desire for more variety in DC challenges.

I can say that there have been a lot of beautiful buildings people have gotten since I last played, ones I’ve seen as I explore people’s cities. I’m just not aware of the challenges faced to get them. Or if they were mostly bought with real money, not earned in-game as should be the case.

Roundabouts would be great. Doubt they’ll ever happen as EA relies on road complaints to keep people building. Roundabouts would solve so many problems and we can’t have that, can we?

Basnjas

I just started playing again about 3 weeks ago after not touching my city since 2019. There have been some interesting changes in the game, like DC, trains and multiple ongoing contests… and some not so good ones.

  1. I competed in CoM for the top spot every week for the one year I played, which burned me out of the game. But now, someone can literally buy their way to the top of the leaderboard with real money. No idea how often that happens since I’m only up to Metropolis. Won the first 3 weeks I was here but the first time someone ‘buys’ their win at that last second to snatch 1000 Simcash from me, I’m leaving again.
  2. In order to compete in the top leagues, you’ll have to use all 90 of your golden tickets each week. That’s 900 golden tickets weekly. The weekly contest this week only provides 250 golden tickets. Which means you’ll run a net loss of 650 golden tickets each week. And you could still lose to someone who buys Plumbob points with cash.
  3. The free monthly pass gives a total of 1,000 golden tickets. Which means an additional 250 per week, leaving you still short 400 golden tickets every week.
  4. The only way to earn enough MP to get the good prizes will be spending real money. Again.

I’m sensing a theme here.

I truly see no upside to this change. Maybe others can find it but I don’t see it. I’m not in a club and have no desire to rejoin again. I loved Wars, have 6 medals and am at L43 from the one year I played. But I came to SCBI to get away from drama, not add to it.

DC has truly been fun for the 5 contests I competed in. Started at position 100 in Bronze league and after (4) 4.5s and a 5.0, next DC I’ll be competing in Platinum league. Still so many questions about DC and I hope to learn more before they ruin that too.

Basnjas

We’ve been sitting between 3 lured up Pokestops since 2pm. It’s now 5:33pm. Shiny rates so far: Acct#1: 207 caught, 1 shiny Acct#2: 199 caught, 0 shiny Acct #3: 150 caught, 2 shiny

Basnjas

I’m going to take a slightly different view that others.

The first city I built, I built fast, leveling up, increasing my population, hoping to get ahead of the race. However, I realized that, with every level I advanced, I was crawling more and more into the hole. The bigger the population, the more services and roads and demands and requirements.

This game is designed to make you push for ever higher achievements that get further out of reach unless you start throwing down a lot of real money on the game.

So I started over.

This was about 10 years ago. My goal was to built a beautiful city and get every awesome building I could. I read and reread every guide on here and took it sssllllooooowwwww.

Like, snail’s pace slow.

I camped at a level below 10. Like, 8 maybe? Or 6? The slower you go, the less things are required of you. By the time I moved on, I had nearly maxed out my storage, upgraded all the slots in my stores, opened up almost all the land I could and had lots of simoleons in the bank.

Then I camped again at L17, before CoM, then at L18. I can’t remember how many months I stayed at L18 before moving up. I was winning CoM every week at that level, getting access to buildings in Specialties I didn’t have access to.

It seemed like a long time, but I bet I reached L18 within 3 months. I built my dream city, lush with rivers and forests and dramatic monuments. When the leadership of my club retired and new management took over, I left my club, floated for a while before finally quitting.

That was 8 or 9 years ago.

I just came back two weeks ago to my city looking exactly like it did back then. I was at L27, still had millions in simoleons, thousands of platinum keys and simbucks and decided to play for a while.

I don’t regret restarting for a moment. I’ve never spent a penny of real money on this game and never will.

YMMV.

Basnjas

Thank you for this suggestion. I went to Sally and got both the shampoo and conditioner. WOW! THIS is what tea tree shampoo is SUPPOSED to be. I still have the OGX version and realized only now how little tea tree oil they even bother to use in theirs these days. No wonder they discontinued it. This Generic dupe is SO much better.

Basnjas

The different between cheating and trauma is CHOICE.

Bad things happen to everyone and how you manage and overcome them is interesting to discover. However, most often these traumas weren’t caused by the MC. It was something that happened TO them.

Cheating is a conscious choice. It reflects on the morality and dedication of the MC. That’s why it turns most people off.

Basnjas

Not sure how when the minimum is a 7/7/7 for today's shadow Ho-oh.

I should know. I got a shiny shadow Ho-oh... 7/7/7...

Still, we both got shiny Ho-ohs so nothing to complain about there. :)

Basnjas

Here's the thing now wrt chasing shadows: if it's a new, somewhat rare Pokémon such that you go out to chase a shadow, most likely it will everywhere in near future events and you'll wonder why you bothered chasing that shadow to begin with.

Basnjas

"Rediscover Kanto" has been their theme since 2017 when Gen 2 came out!

Basnjas

It's 3:30pm, so half way through Comm Day here. Every Comm Day, the two Pokestops we sit on and 5-6 nearby are all lured up starting right at 2pm. Right now? I don't see a single lure going anyway, even with the 3-hour lure duration. I'll probably drop at least one during the last 15 minutes to get more post-Comm Day spawns for the hours after the event ends.

Doesn't speak well for the actual value of current Comm Days catches.

Basnjas

When, in the history of this game, has Niantic EVER done a good job educating us on playing their game? I mean, that's what The Silph Road has always been for!

Basnjas

I got one above 15xx... a 1503 on the first Max raid we did. 10 balls, most exc/curve GRazz and... it ran. So... yeah. Had 3 come down to last ball and 2 ran.

It was weird. First raid many of us had them run. Second raid, almost all of us caught on first or second ball. Third and fourth raid were difficult like the first raid. Completely uneven.

The actual take down was easy for us (random group of 12-15, most multi accounting for 32-35 accounts per raid). The catching was awful with lots of Lapras running throughout the group.

Basnjas

That's what I was afraid of. Thanks for the quick response. :)

Basnjas

but now I want to spend money, but I can't...

I completely agree. Here's why: I don't want another event where I waste 2 days catching all the crap Pokémon we get over and over and over again with low shiny odds. I'd rather pay for better shiny odds and have ALL Unova Pokémon available to catch in the wild as shinies.

I spend less and less time paying attention to upcoming events because I just assume Niantic is gonna do things like this. I hate how they keep proving us right...

Basnjas

Here’s the underlying issue with max Pokémon. If you get goods IV ones to invest in, great! If not, it feels like a complete waste to dump max energy into crappy ones.

So far I’ve gotten well over 50 Dynamax Pokémon. Of those I’ve gotten a single Hundo, (2) 93%, (1) 91%, a couple 87-89% and the vast majority have been 82% or lower. So what am I supposed to do with my Dynamax energy everyday? Waste it into an 82% 13 ATK thing I’ll probably end up trading and never evolve?

Meanwhile, I have a ton of lucky 98% and hundos of each of those Pokémon, most with 3 moves and Comm Day moves, many at L40-50, that I can’t Dynamax. In fact, the only reason I’ve been looking forward to today’s Max Monday is that I had SO MANY lucky, costume, PVP, hundo Charizards to evolve the last time around that I literally used all my regular candy! I’ve got 600XL and 60 regular candy. So today I hope to double that. lol.

After that? I like the idea of Max Mondays but it means not doing any Max battles on the weekends so I don’t block any of the limited spots around us. Not a great concept!

Basnjas

Fascinating! As someone who plays on both an iPhone 15Pro and an iPhone 8, I notice everywhere the 8 crashes that the 15 Pro doesn’t. And, yes, it’s not from just catching or checking either inventory box. It’s everything to do with buddies (avatar), gifts (avatars), raids (avatars), Dynamax (avatars), etc.

Basnjas

Almost finished w my 2nd incense and no Swirlix. Really, Niantic? This is ridiculous!

Basnjas

Slightly different but I was doing a route, detoured slightly off to do a Dynamax battle and the route paused, as it always does on my older device (iPhone 8). However, normally when I get back in range of the route, the pause button lights up and I can restart the route. Not so yesterday. Instead, the route completely filled in from start to finish with no ability to unpause the route. Followed the route all the way back to the start but wasn’t able to unpause at any point. Had to finally cancel and restart the route. The restart worked fine all the way to the end.

Basnjas

Nope. Which is why I’ve created a Note on my device that I save all of my search strings to. After having them disappear a few times with strings that are 20+ items long, I decided to create copy / paste in a place that Niantic can’t destroy.

Basnjas

Congratulations!!! Great way to head into a new season. :)

Basnjas

Thanks for mentioning this. Just checked and my SRR had been equipped also.